Graphical depictions of computer-generated data aid users in their analysis and understanding of the data. Many types of software applications can display data graphs, but the styles that define the appearance of graphical displays were traditionally tightly coupled with the software application generating the graphs. Difficulties arose during attempts to use graphical styles defined in one software application in a different software application. Also, the graphical styles defined within a software application usually were limited to fairly small sets of configurable items, such as background colors.
The present invention overcomes the aforementioned difficulties by providing a computer-implemented system and method for generating data graphical displays. The data is indicative of a plurality of variables. The system and method receive data that is to be displayed in a non-textual format. Graph style data items are retrieved that contain display characteristics for displaying the data in the non-textual format. The data is displayed in accordance with the graph style data items.